October 2014

December 2012

12/17/2012

This has been an
excellent year for IBM i, from many points of view. Professionally, it’s been
excellent for me as well – and these two facts are definitely related. I’ve
been more involved in talking to clients and partners than ever before, the IBM
i team has delivered several key enhancements, and I am excited about the plans
we have for 2013 and beyond.

As 2012 draws to a close, I want to leave you with a
“summary” post that can serve to gather together the most important messages
I’ve delivered here through the year. I’ve organized them into themes

Key Announcements

Two Technology Refreshes came out in 2012, and those are
important, but they are not the only big announcements:

I’ve also had a couple of customer reference posts, one
about Turner
Industries and another about Nishii
Paint Industry, a customer IBM i won from the competition. I hope to have
more of these next year, because I’ve received quite a few positive comments
about the value of these examples.

I look forward to continuing this blog into 2013. I know we
have many new things to tell you about throughout the year. I also want to
share some of the stories of clients using IBM i solutions to enable their businesses
to succeed.

But first, vacation! I’ll enjoy some time off around the
holidays. I hope you all can, too. See you next year!

12/10/2012

Two studies have recently been completed by the
International Technology Group (ITG) that should be of particular interest to
the IBM i community. I
wrote about the previous ITG study back in February of 2011. Now, almost
two years later, the refreshed study confirms what the prior study showed, and
what we all know from experience: IBM i on Power Systems is not only a great
platform for function and stability, but it’s also a great platform for a
company’s bottom line.

The first new study is the ITG study called “IBM i for
Midsize Businesses.” The short URL for it is http://bit.ly/IBMiTCO_ITGMidsize and
it confirms that the total cost of ownership for IBM i is significantly less
than for the typical x86-based competition. Here’s a key chart.

The numbers are impressive. Over a three year period,
running a midsize business on the combination of IBM i and Power Systems costs 44%
less than running that business on Microsoft Windows Server and x86, and 57%
less than Oracle/Linux on x86. These numbers continue the value proposition
the platform has had for years, enabled as they are by the integrated nature of
IBM i, and the automated nature of DB2 for i.

What remains a surprise for many customers and prospective
customers, however, is how those three-year costs break down between Total Cost
of Acquisition (TCA) and operational costs. The numbers are in the following
chart:

Again, IBM i and Power Systems combine to beat the
competition on average for acquisition costs; by 24% vs. Windows and
x86 and by 47% vs. Oracle/Linux and x86. This means that ongoing
operating expenses for IBM i are less than half of what they are for
competitive environments; on average 51% less than Windows and 61%
less than Oracle/Linux.

ITG did more than one study this time. They created a study that
is of more interest to our larger clients. That study is called “IBM i for
Enterprise Businesses: Quantifying the Value of Resilience” because one of the
most important aspects of a platform for large clients is “How much money will
it cost me when it doesn’t work?” The short URL for that study is http://bit.ly/IBMi_ITGEnterprise.

For this study, ITG looked at large businesses in various
industries that run on IBM i, and those in the same industry that run on
competitive platforms. I’ve selected on chart that shows the huge difference
platform choice makes.

Again the study looks at a three-year period, and again, IBM
i + Power Systems is a winning combination. With the integrity and reliability of
the system, and with the features we’ve added over time to allow more changes
to be made in the environment without disruption, the cost of downtime is
significantly lower on IBM i. And this is a trend. A great quote from the
study:

"No matter how one rates
the value of IBM i’s distinctive strengths, that value is increasing over
time."

Please, take a few minutes to look at one or both of the
studies. And the next time you encounter someone who wonders if trusting your
business to IBM i and Power Systems is the right business decision, point them
to the documents. The numbers in the study, plus your personal experiences with
the stability and function of IBM i make a pretty powerful story.

12/03/2012

Recently, the COMMON
Americas Advisory Council (CAAC) was in Rochester to see what IBM has planned for IBM
i, Power Systems and related products. During my presentation to them, I showed
a couple of charts that caused a significant amount of excitement – and quite a
few people commented on Twitter. Here’s one of those tweets:

Now, you might wonder if these CAAC members broke some rule
by letting out some confidential information. But, in fact, they did not. These
people are very professional and treat IBM’s information carefully.

We’ve been using a couple of charts to describe the IBM i
strategy as it relates to new function and as it relates to the length of
support for releases. We typically only use them in face-to-face meetings,
though. Why? Because taken on their own, without the words we’re saying
face-to-face, people can misinterpret them. But, because these charts have been
presented at several events, the charts are out in the public domain. I figured
I’d show them to you today, and I’ll write the key messages we typically
deliver verbally.

You promise to read the words, right? The words are
important. You’ll read the words? OK, with that promise, here’s the first
chart.

IBM i 7.1 added the capability to update key parts of the
operating system with Technology Refreshes (TRs), and so far, we’ve delivered
five of them. Before TRs, we delivered a new major release every two years. (They
used to be even more frequent than that.) With TRs, IBM i has been able to
deliver key features such as Live Partition Mobility without a major release. In
fact, we have delivered enough function since 7.1 that a full release would
have been required to deliver it. Because TRs are more granular, more
self-contained, these updates have been delivered without making changes in the
surrounding operating system.

However, therewill be more major releases. As
I
mentioned a few weeks ago, there are some enhancements that are simply too
large and too pervasive for Technology Refreshes. In fact, our IBM i
development team is working on two major releases after 7.1 already.

This was the message that got the members of CAAC excited
first, and they wanted to know if it was public knowledge. Indeed it is. In
fact, a version of the chart is included in the Strategy Paper released by
Colin Parris, the Power Systems General Manager. If you’d like to see that, go
to the “Power of i” website and download the latest version at http://bit.ly/Powerofi. Now, to be fair, the
paper does not specifically mention the future releases that are under
development, but the chart is there, and the “i next” and “i next + 1”
releases are on the chart.

The second chart – and the one that started the activity on
Twitter – points out that the V5R4
release will reach “End of Service” on September 30, 2013. But another point
that jumped out at the CAAC members is the time span covered by the chart. Take
a look at it, but then please read the words I have after it.

So, there it is: a chart that shows IBM i out past 2025. That’s
certainly worth tweeting about. As I’ve said quite a bit recently, though,
“it’s just math.” Because the first chart showed two releases under
development, clearly they are going to be delivered at some point, and they
will have a period of support. Given how frequently IBM i major releases are
produced, and how long they are likely to be supported, it’s pretty easy to
build a timeline that carries those releases out into the middle of the next
decade.

The point I like to make right away is that any line on the
chart that has an arrowhead on it represents a rough timeframe. For example, IBM
is not announcing an “End of Service” date for 6.1 or 7.1. The chart’s
6.1 and 7.1 arrows merely mean “if these releases have a life cycle as
long as V5R4 did, their EoS date will be out to abouthere.” V5R4
is the longest-lived release ever for this platform. Customers keep asking us
to keep releases in market longer, so there’s no reason to believe we’d support
6.1 and 7.1 any less time than we did V5R4, but we have not made any
announcements.

Similarly the arrowheads for the “i Next” and “i Next + 1”
releases do not indicate dates when we will announce those releases, when they
will be available or when we will stop supporting them. However, because we do
plan to have new releases, and we’ve told our customers that very clearly, this
chart lays out what that would mean, on a calendar.

Many of the messages I give to clients are designed to give
them a view of the commitment IBM has for the platform. When the CAAC saw these
charts, they thought that the combined message of the two is very powerful. What
do you think? Feel free to respond in the comments section.

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